WebGL was first introduced in 2007 by Mozilla. Two years later many big players like Apple and Google all joined the WebGL foundation to initiated an official v1.0 release in 2011. What we have now is a v2.0 stable release that was last updated 5 years ago. It doesn't looked like a tech that's being actively updated like many softwares do these days. For a software as a service company (SAAS), the first impression you may wonder is why don't you guys choose to make an App? That was our first offer as well.

Turns out many real estate company we talked to did not want an App?! Yes they don't want an app. All they want is a listing link.

Here are pros and cons of WebGL.

1. It allows interactive actions like moving around in a space, picking up and dropping down items with standard JavaScript.
2. Can handle 2d and 3d graphics without installing anything.
3. Old somewhat means stable.
4. It's embedded with almost all browsers without asking to user to download anything.

It also comes with 1 big problem for us.

The size of the file. The file size is the handcuff.

The camera can take 8k images, our program can make super HD tours, but it could only be uploaded in webgl to a very small size. What we found is for mobile it is around 30MB and 70 MB for desktop, otherwise the browser will freak out.

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Webgl can also cache quite a bit, so it can be tough for some older PCs to run quickly on.

Good news is, the next generation of online graphics computing technology is under development. WebGPU is on its way! It is supposed to be so much more powerful that it is like comparing the movie Toy story 1 of 1995 and Toy story4 of 2019. Here is a good read about webGPU from Daniel Burger.